Post Election Thoughts

The Greens have much to celebrate, our campaign has been widely praised as the most effective of all parties and we have achieved our goal of getting more than 10% of the party vote. We had hoped to get our top 15 candidates into parliament but James Shaw just missed out. This was a real pity because the Wellington Central campaign he led was probably the most comprehensive of all the Green campaigns and was only 12 votes short of pipping Labour.

The Greens will make history when Mojo Mathers becomes the first profoundly deaf MP to be elected, while Mojo didn't get in on the initial voting she is likely to do so once the special votes have been included.

As for my own campaign, I had hoped we could double the Green vote in Invercargill and we almost did that by raising the 4.26% we got in 2008 to just .1 away from 8%. I must admit that I was a little disappointed as the impression I got throughout the campaign indicated a greater level of support. Three factors probably created barriers to our final result, the first was the effective blocking of my appearance on CUE TV's "Election Special". While it wasn't exactly a riveting show, and at most may have only reached a couple of thousand viewers, it would still have reached a much greater audience than the seven candidate forums I attended. The audiences for these meetings ranged from one to about forty and many of the people who attended them were the same. What was especially frustrating was the fact that the questions posed on this programme encompassed many local issues that I have had a direct involvement with and at a much greater level than the other candidates.

The second negative influence was probably voter apathy. Around 5,000 fewer people voted in Invercargill than in 2008 and many of those were from the less affluent suburbs. The fact that the total votes for both National (3,000 less) and Labour (2,500 less) were considerably down from the last election, the greens increase of 1,000 was significant and should be celebrated.

Winston Peters provided the third influence, with his party vote almost doubling in Invercargill despite having no local candidate and only a couple of small billboards to indicate their existence. In most polling booths the Green vote doubled around Invercargill but many of the booths, where we did best in the last election, did not show the same growth. It was in these areas that New Zealand First was strongest and in a number of them scored higher than us. The power of mainstream TV is obviously a huge influence on voters and the prominence of Peters in the last couple of weeks was extraordinary. The tea cup fiasco played right into his hands, as a conspiracy theorist there is none better than Winston and he milked it to the utmost. While the Greens exposed real concerns around National's plans for the unpopular asset sales it was what Peter's hinted to, regarding the contents of the tea cup tapes, that got full media attention. The fact that he often shared billing with Key and Goff ahead of the Green leaders on national media was very influential and almost trumped the huge effort in leafleting, billboards and local campaigns the Greens had committed to.

To end on a positive note, we will probably have 14 MPs in parliament (the most we have ever achieved) and the ability to share the workload and use the increased resourcing generated will be hugely valuable in growing our Party even further. Watch out 2014!

A supply and confidence agreement is practically ruled out at this stage, Victorina, and National don't need the Greens to control government. We will probably look at some sort of memorandum of agreement like had had over the last few years to progress our priorities like cleaning rivers and home insulation. We would never support National's plans that don't fit our own policies. I know I will personally be involved in actively opposing National's plans for education and the sale of state assets.

Popular posts from this blog

The latest Unicef report has us languishing at the bottom of the developed world in relation to the health and welfare our children and youth. This report was based on the data our government collects and concerningly, with regards to child poverty, a ranking wasn't provided because of a refusal to follow standard practice (an admission of failure?). In many documented areas we are seriously neglecting our young people (ranking numbers are determined by the data provided from a maximum of 41 developed countries):Child Poverty (41/41?) I consider that we must be by far the worst in the developed world for child poverty when the Government refuses to use the same measures as other countries so that we can be ranked. Our Children's Commissioner and the Child Poverty Monitor currently state that 14% of our children suffer from material hardship. We have a much higher threshold to determine this and require 7 elements to recognise hardship, while most other countries use only two.…

Metiria Turei's AGM admission has exposed the inequality, racism and meanness that thrives in New Zealand society.

There are few people who can look back at themselves as young adults (18-24 years) without remembering past decisions and actions that we wish could be replayed with our current knowledge and experience. Times when we badly mismanaged relationships; broke the law and got away with it (or not); impulsively squandered money or said or did something stupid while intoxicated.

The National Government probably passed its "use by" date well before the last election. It has held power through clever PR and an affable Prime Minister, despite achieving little of note over nine years. However, John Key is no fool, he resigned because his money trading, sixth sense told him the odds of winning another term in 2017 were not great. The years of mismanagement were being increasingly revealed and the election would be the Opposition's to lose.

The Government is rapidly running out of excuses for its lack of competence. After nine years it is hard to blame the previous Labour Government for things that are happening now. The Global Financial Crisis occurred in 2007-2008 (a decade ago) and the Christchurch earthquake happened seven years ago. Whatever the country is dealing with now is largely down to National's governance.

What I find interesting is the eventual demise of this Government may be triggered by Melanie Reid's investigative work on th…